Thread: World War One
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Old 08-04-14, 11:00 PM   #17
Stealhead
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A friend from my Air Force unit and I once found a some what forgotten little graveyard while mountain biking in Germany.It was located in the woods NE of Waldleiningen,Germany. As I recall 15 or 20 graves mostly WWI but a few from the Franco-Prussian war.

The interesting thing was we found this place 100% by chance as we never made a specific riding plan we just packed some water and food and picked a direction and rode into the woods. Heck we rode 80 or 100 miles many times just exploring. It was pretty much lets see where this trail leads today and then we'd camp at dusk and head back to base in the morning usually arriving on post around dusk the next day that was the weekend.If a steep incline blocked the way we'd just climb up with the bikes on ours backs not sure I could do that now.

So you could say that it was pure serendipity that we found this forgotten grave yard and even better that we managed to find it again the next weekend after one of our German co-workers wanted us to find it again and find what village it was near(we usually did not take maps or composes).The first time we had ridden through the nearest village so we had to sort of back track by way of guessing.

Our friend got some people together and cleaned the whole place up very nicely.I would say that the place had been forgotten by anyone who cared since WWII.

That is what I miss most about Germany the exploring quite a bit of solace in the forest. Probably why they picked that spot in the first place it was surely where those old soldiers liked to be most of all.
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